Rating: R, for language.

Disclaimer: Major Samantha Carter, the SGC, and anything else from Stargate SG-1 belongs to MGM, Gekko, and Double Secret. Claudia Jean Cregg, and anything else taken from The West Wing, is solely the property of Aaron Sorkin. I'm just borrowing.

Summary: "The gentle collision of their lips tasted like cream and mint and slick cosmetics."

Archive: Liz Barr's 'Cocktail Thing'; the Wing Swing; heliopolis - go for it.  Anyone else, ask me first.

Dedication: For Lara, who said nice encouraging things, and is so very huggable. Happy birthday, doll.

**********

The lighting was in the bar was dim, and a vague kind of hazy pink. The colour of cliché.  Sam couldn't say why she was there. It was one of her more stupid ideas, but it wasn't often that she got the time to practice living in the real world. She crossed the room to the bar, regulating her gait to try and lose the automatic 'military march' that could slip into her step even when off duty.

Starting to relax, despite trying to blend in to a fluffy pink atmosphere that was definitely incongruous with her personality, Sam brushed her fingers through her hair, tousling it lightly, and straightened her mauve shirt. The three-quarter length sleeves were irritating her arms, but the shirt had a figure flattering cut so she tolerated it. Cassie had told her that style of sleeve was 'in', but to Sam they merely reeked of indecision.

While still debating this important style matter with herself, Sam sat down on one of the worn bar stools covered in pink PVC masquerading as leather, and absent-mindedly picked up a cocktail menu. Her distraction must have looked like vacillation, because several moments later she was jolted by the coupling of a voice and breath brushing her ear.

"I recommend a Sloe Comfortable Screw, personally."

*****

CJ had been watching the elegant blonde.  When she turned, mouth open as if to speak but no sound emerging, CJ began to wonder if she had perhaps been too bold with her innuendo, but then the blonde's slickly painted lips turned upwards in a smile and CJ's confidence returned.

"As a cocktail suggestion, of course."

"Of course," the blond replied. "What else?"

CJ was taken aback when the next words out of the blonde's mouth were "I recognise you, you know." CJ said nothing. "This is a risky place for you to be.  Most of my life is spent inside a mountain in Colorado Springs, so if I know who you are I'm sure there are others here who do too."

"Then I don't need to waste time introducing myself. You, however, hidden away inside your mountain, manage to avoid the public eye..."

"Sam," she said.  "My name's Sam Carter. US Air Force. And you're CJ Cregg. Bartlet's public face. Tell me, does he appreciate the beating you take on his behalf?"

CJ carefully took a sip from her grasshopper before speaking, folding her hands on the bar in front of her. "USAF. So you're taking a risk being here tonight too." CJ ran her eyes pointedly around the room, filled entirely with females in various stages of inebriation. "Officers frequenting lesbian bars isn't exactly smiled upon by the hierarchy, is it?"

*****

Sam closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and wished that CJ had left the topic of the military's attitude to homosexuality alone. But then, why did she even bring up her job if that was the case? Part of her, she suspected, wanted the idiocy of her location pointed out to her bluntly so that she could go home without feeling like it was her own cowardice that had her running away.  And yet she did not run.  CJ's eyes and something in the shade of her lipstick held her.

"You're right, CJ. This isn't one of the smartest things I've ever done. But I'm on vacation, I don't exactly know the social circle here anymore, and I wanted to go somewhere that felt comfortable." Sam's eyes followed the same path that she'd just watched CJ's take around the room. "Places like this used to feel comfortable. It's been a while."

The bartender, a diminutive redhead dressed in jeans and a tight black t-shirt with 'strange little girl' emblazoned in red on the front, stopped level with Sam on the other side of the bar just as she finished speaking.  "This isn't a waiting room, doll.  If you want to use the seat, you gotta buy a drink."  Sam bristled at the familiarity, but searched her memory for the name of the cocktail CJ had recommended.  Coming up blank Sam turned and opened her lips to ask, but CJ cut her off.

"She'll have a Sloe Comfortable Screw, thanks Gina."

Gina, whom Sam could see had visibly warmed to her when she realised she was with CJ, grinned, reaching for a glass with one hand and a bottle of sloe gin with the other.  "Good choice, doll.  If you can't get it in the bedroom, get it in a bar, right?"  Gina's laugh was more enthusiastic than her comment deserved, but Sam smiled along.  The fiery little bartender seemed like somebody Sam would rather have on her side.

*****

Gina wanted to make a move on Sam, CJ realised.  The over-enthusiastic laughter, the attempt at innuendo.  Gina wasn't supposed to pick up customers, more for the fact that she was bad at it than that her boss had any sort of ethics.  For Gina's sake, CJ told herself, she picked up Sam's drink when it was ready, tossed a few folded bills on the bar, and led Sam over to a table in the corner.

When CJ spoke, she opted for bluntness.  "You're not a lesbian."

"Excuse me?"  Those great big indigo eyes blinked in surprise.

"You're not," CJ repeated, "a lesbian.  You want me to think you are, perhaps you even want to think you are, but my guess is you've got a man waiting for you somewhere."

Sam took a long swallow of her drink before raising her head and meeting CJ's eyes.  "I don't like to categorise, but if I must I prefer 'of ambiguous gender preference'."  She paused.  "And he's not waiting.  That's the problem.  If he was waiting, I wouldn't be here."

"So there are some deep emotional issues going on here."  CJ shook her head and reached for Sam's slim left hand, studying her short, neat, unpolished nails.  "Let's get one thing clear.  I don't want to hear about them.  Deal?"

Sam snorted derisively.  "Under no circumstances do I plan to tell you, so you have nothing to worry about."

"Tell me something else, Sam.  Tell me why you're sitting here with me.  I have no illusions about what I want from tonight, but I'm finding you a little more difficult to read."

"Well, we're not supposed to be able to introspect the thoughts and experiences of anybody but ourselves, are we?  Somebody said that; some famous philosopher."

CJ smiled.  "So famous that you can't remember his name?"

Sam arched her perfect eyebrow.  "I'm a scientist, not a philosopher."

"I thought you were a soldier.  Sam Carter, USAF."  CJ said, miming a sloppy salute.

*****

Sam tried not to laugh at CJ's attempt at a salute.  There was a combination of too much alcohol, too much TV, and too much sarcasm mixed in equal doses and hidden behind humour.  CJ wasn't fond of the military, Sam could tell.

"I'm sure there's no law saying I can't be both," Sam said in response to CJ.  "Unlike the law that says I can't be both military and in this bar right now.  I could lose my job for being here.  How screwed up is that?"

CJ sighed loudly.  "I was hoping you wouldn't want to have this discussion with me."

"You're the most public face of this administration, discounting the president.  I save this country-"  Sam cut herself off, swearing inwardly.  This was why people whose occupations fell under classification as high as Sam's usually avoided drinking with strangers.  "Serve this country.  I serve this country with everything I have.  Try and tell me I'm not good enough, just try.  So tell me, whose dumb idea was Don't Ask, Don't Tell anyway?"

CJ groaned and raised a hand to brush her hair behind her ear.  "Don't ask me that, Sam.  I don't know the answer."

*****

If there was one thing CJ hated it was being asked a question to which she didn't know the answer.  She had tossed and turned through nightmares about not knowing the answer.  Not being good enough.  That she had no answer for Sam ripped at her gut.  In the short time since they had met CJ had come to feel like she owed Sam answers.  Like stupid policies like Don't Ask, Don't Tell were hers to defend.  She knew it didn't work.  All she had to do was look at the White House's figures to know that it didn't work.

"It's a stupid policy, Sam.  I know that.  I can't go on record saying that, but I'll say it to you now.  It doesn't work."

"All I'm saying is this: if you look at all the weedy little straight guys that are around, and then you look at some of the big butch lesbians, who would you rather have defending your country?  I could take out the camp little men with one arm tied behind my back, but the butch lesbians... that's a whole other story."

CJ laughed at Sam's theory.  "You've certainly got a point there, doll," she said, purposely mimicking Gina's favoured familiarity.  "I wouldn't like to go up against those butch lesbians either.  Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a way around a law we can't change.  We'd have an incredibly hard time even getting into it in a serious way, and to be honest, it's all about politics.  We can't lose the votes that letting homosexuals serve openly in the military would lose us.  I'm sorry.  Believe me when I say that I of all people am sorry."

"I believe you, CJ.  It doesn't help.  I still can't be myself in front of my closest friends because it could get me kicked out of the institution that owns the greater part of my life."

CJ could see Sam's frustration.  She wasn't trying to start a fight, and CJ didn't want to give her one. 

"Hey, Samantha Carter, I'm sure you're a great soldier.  Let me buy you another cocktail, and we can toast the stupidity of Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

The khol liner around Sam's eyes had not smudged in the smoky, sweaty, pink atmosphere.  The sharp black still defined the rims of her wide, inquisitive eyes.  A wink from one of those eyes felt monumental.  A butterfly in China... CJ found herself thinking as Sam's lips parted.

"Then we can go home."

It wasn't a question.

*****

Later, when CJ was in the shower, Sam gave some thought to her boldness.  Propositioning anybody at all was unusual for her, women even more so.  It was that damn lipstick, that damn cocktail.

"Why did you come home with me?" CJ had asked in the moments between the end of the sex and the beginning of the awkwardness.  "It doesn't strike me as something that you do."

Sam had considered a slew of answers, each one less true than the one before, until anything but simplicity seemed absurd.  She shrugged.  "You're taller than I am."

CJ blinked.  "Most women aren't," Sam explained.  "Also, your lipstick."  When she leaned over to taste it, what was left of it, she could still smell CJ's grasshopper on her breath.  The gentle collision of their lips tasted like cream and mint and slick cosmetics. 

The kiss had only lasted a moment before CJ rose.  Sam knew she would leave before CJ came out of the shower, and it saddened her.  Even the most vibrant of sensations were fake, and he wasn't even waiting.  

"Well, fuck him."  Sam stepped into her shoes as she reached for her purse and dug around for a pen.

*****

The emptiness of the room did not surprise CJ when she returned.  Sam's shirt and black jeans were gone from their rumpled pile by the bed, her purse no longer flung over the arm of the dresser chair.

What would I have said to her if she'd waited, CJ wondered.  She unwound the towel from around her head and was viciously rubbing the moisture from her hair when the piece of paper on her pillow fluttered in the breeze from the open window and caught her attention.  It was a ten dollar bill, with something scrawled across it in thick unfamiliar black cursive.  CJ laughed out loud as she made out the words.

Have a sloe comfortable screw on me, doll.  Cheers.

*****

End.

Author's Notes:  Chocolate covered coffee beans (decaf!) to Christine for the incisive beta, I love that you teach me things, thank you.  Also to Laura, a wonderful and supportive second opinion.  Thanks go to Liz's urge for a new multi-fandom project, and Teanna's alcoholism for galvanizing me into action.  Also to Tori Amos for Gina's t-shirt, and my dad for providing a synonym for 'indecision', and correcting my spelling of 'blonde'.